Campus Circle Vol 26 Issue 3 by Campus Circle

April 2016 | Vol. 26 Issue 3 | Always Free

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TABLE OF CONTENTS April 2016 Vol. 26 Issue 3

WHAT’SINSIDE

the

Cooper Copeland editor.chief@campuscircle.net

Sean Michael Beyer Film Editor film.editor@campuscircle.net Music Editor music.editor@campuscircle.net Calendar Editor Frederick Mintchell calendar.editor@campuscircle.net Editorial Interns Ryan Bouziane

Contributing Writers Angela Matano Jessie Froggatt

ADVERTISING Sean Bello sean.bello@campuscircle.net

NEWS 04 TEACHING FREEDOM OF SPEECH

UC ADMITTING 15% MORE CA STUDENTS

06 STUDENTS FOR TRUMP FILM 08 DON CHEADLE IS MILES DAVIS IN MILES AHEAD MUSIC 10 ROAD TRIP WITH THE WILD FEATHERS AND THE SHELTERS

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NEWS

TEACHING FREEDOM OF SPEECH BY HOWARD GILLMAN AND ERWIN CHEMERINSKY LOS ANGELES TIMES (TNS)

TEACHING A FRESHMAN SEMINAR on freedom of speech on college campuses has made us aware of the urgent need to educate the current generation of students about the importance of the 1st Amendment. From the beginning of our course, we were surprised by the often unanimous willingness of our students to support efforts to restrict and punish a wide range of expression. Not a single student in the class saw any constitutional problem with requiring professors to give so-called trigger warnings before teaching potentially disturbing material. Surveys across the country confirm that our students are not unique. According to the William F. Buckley Jr. Program at Yale, 72 percent of students support disciplinary action against “any student or faculty member on campus who uses language that is considered racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise offensive.” Too few students grasp that one person’s offense can be another’s expression of truth to power. Young people’s support for freedom of speech has waned in part because of their admirable desire to create an educational environment where all can thrive. Our students or their friends have experienced the psychological harms of hateful speech or bullying more than they have experienced the social harms of censorship or the punishment of dissent. Simply telling students to toughen up isn’t persuasive. Moreover, they were born long after the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam War protests that gave their elders direct experience with the need for free expression. It is their education that’s lacking. History demonstrates that when we give officials broad powers to restrict or punish speech considered hateful, offensive or demeaning, that power is inevitably abused. Unpopular speakers are victimized, and legitimate opinion silenced. Over the course of U.S. history, officials censored or punished those whose speech they disliked: abolitionists, labor activists, religious minorities, communists and socialists, cultural critics, gays and lesbians, demonstrators and protesters of all stripes. The students were surprised to learn that people went to prison for speech criticizing the draft during World War I, or for teaching or espousing communism during the 1920s and 1930s and in the McCarthy era. The effect of the 1st Amendment’s strong protections for “dangerous” and “offensive” speech allowed oppressed and marginalized groups to challenge indecency laws, segregation, patriarchy and declarations of war. Another key lesson was that censoring intolerant or offensive speech can be all but impossible to manage without threatening legitimate debate. There are those who will take offense at antiZionist speech and at pro-Zionist speech, at the rhetoric of Black Lives Matter and the demands of racial equality, at advocacy for LGBT rights and for religious beliefs that run counter to those rights. Our students came to realize that there was no way to create a “safe space” on campuses where students could be free from one set of offenses without engaging in massive censorship, and perhaps creating another kind of offense. Of course, freedom of speech is not absolute. Incitement of illegal activity, defamation, true

threats and harassment are not protected by the 1st Amendment. Learning what kinds of expression can be constitutionally punished gives students a realistic sense of how speech can be regulated on public university campuses. For speech that students find offensive but that does not fall within these categories, they must also consider one of the most hard-won lessons of free speech law: Often the best remedy for hateful speech is more speech, not enforced silence. By challenging and contesting offensive speech students learn to hone their voices in defense of their values, an important skill in a diverse democratic society. By contrast, punishing expression often achieves little except to create martyrs. At the beginning of the semester we took a vote in the class: Who would agree that the University of Oklahoma was right to expel students who had led a racist chant in a bus on the way to a fraternity event? All hands were raised. By semester’s end, many, but not all, had changed their minds, and those who still supported the university did so with a much more sophisticated understanding of the balance of issues. Rather than mock students or ignore their concerns, we need to make sure they understand the context of the Constitution’s free speech guarantees. At stake is not merely the climate on our campuses, but the longevity of the great social benefits associated with the rise of modern free speech traditions. ——— ABOUT THE WRITERS Howard Gillman is chancellor and professor of law, political science and history at the University of California at Irvine. Erwin Chemerinsky is founding dean and a professor at the UC Irvine School of Law. They wrote this for the Los Angeles Times. ——— ©2016 Los Angeles Times Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

UC WILL ADMIT 15 PERCENT MORE CALIFORNIA STUDENTS THIS YEAR BY TERESA WATANABE LOS ANGELES TIMES (TNS)

LOS ANGELES — The University of California announced Monday a significant boost in California students, particularly Latinos and African-Americans, offered admission for fall 2016. The announcement comes as the UC system has been under political fire for what critics say is a policy of admitting too many applicants from other states and countries. Admissions offers to California high school seniors increased by 8,488 to 66,123 — nearly a 15 percent increase over last year. Among them, offers to Latinos increased to 22,704 from 16,608 last year, while those to African-Americans grew to 3,083 from 2,337 during the same time period. UC also increased offers to nonresident students, to 32,799, representing a 7.7 percent hike. The three most popular campuses — UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego — have capped their enrollment of out-of-state students. The announcement came just days after a state audit slammed the 10-campus system for hurting California students, particularly under-represented minorities, by admitting

CAMPUS CIRCLE April 2016

too many applicants from other states and countries. The audit urged a cap on nonresidents, along with tougher eligibility standards for them. UC President Janet Napolitano decried those findings as unfair. She said UC tripled the number of nonresidents in the last eight years so their extra tuition costs — $728 million during that time — could help compensate for massive budget cuts in the system. UC lost nearly $1 billion, or about a third of its budget, after the 2008 recession and has still not fully recovered, although the state has begun increasing support. But thanks to a deal with Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature for more state dollars, UC agreed to admit 5,000 more California students this year, and another 5,000 — for a total of 10,000 — over the next three years. Today’s admissions figures, in the unlikely event that all the students accepted their offers, would put the state 3,488 admissions over its goal. “We’ve intensified our efforts to boost enrollment of Californians at the University and all indications are that these

efforts are working,” Napolitano said in a statement Monday. “Our commitment to California and California students has never wavered, even through the worst financial downturn since the Great Depression. Now, with additional state funding, we are able to bring in even more California students.” Overall, 62.7 percent of California freshmen applicants were admitted, a jump of almost 7 percent from 2015. UC received a record number of applications — more than 200,000 — for fall 2016. California freshmen who will be the first in their families to attend college rose to 42.8 percent of admitted students, and students from low-income families increased to 37.4 percent of the total number of admissions. Admissions data for transfer students and for individual UC campuses has not yet been released. ——— ©2016 Los Angeles Times Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Film | Music | Culture

“anyone who wants to get a jump on possible oscar nominees for 2017 check out ‘miles ahead,’ directed by don cheadle who also stars as the jazz trumpeter miles davis. …as witty and knowing as mr. cheadle’s sly, whispery performance.” - A.O. Scott,

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Donald Trump supporter and Westmont College student Jake Lopez grabs a Trump campaign poster in his dorm room to take out on campus on March 29, 2016 in Montecito, Calif. (BRIAN VAN DER BRUG/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS)

ON CAMPUSES ACROSS THE COUNTRY, STUDENTS ARE STANDING UP FOR DONALD TRUMP BY ROSANNA XIA

LOS ANGELES TIMES (TNS) SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. — Hunkered behind a MacBook decorated with stickers that read “This laptop was brought to you by capitalism” and “TRUMP 2016,” Jake Lopez bounces T-shirt slogans off his friend Ian McIlvoy. “Trumplicans,” he says, nodding with satisfaction. “I think it’ll take off.” Lopez is the California director of Students for Trump. Working from his dorm at Westmont College, he helps marshal the thousands of students who are pounding out phone calls, taping up fliers and blanketing Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat in an effort to persuade their peers that Donald Trump is the man. Although vastly outnumbered nationwide by left-leaning classmates chanting “Feel the Bern,” the youngest supporters of the GOP front-runner say they are similarly inspired by the hope of a radically different future and eager to support a leader who strikes them as anti-establishment and willing to speak his mind. The verbiage that erupts from Trump’s stream-ofconsciousness is not universally appreciated by students. Many say the very mention of his name can be hurtful, threatening or cause for intervention. A Mexican-American student at Scripps College in Claremont woke up to “trump2016” scrawled on the whiteboard outside her dorm room. The student body president called it a “racist act.” On the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, students protested when someone wrote in chalk: “Accept the Inevitable: Trump 2016.” Jim Wagner, the president of the university, met with protesters and later sent an email to everyone on campus saying, in part, “They voiced their genuine concern and pain in the face of this perceived intimidation.” Young Trump followers say such backlash against minority opinion, in a realm where liberal culture dominates, is part of what draws them to the cause. “Today, there is a movement to silence differing views,” Lopez says. He argues that the increasingly common practice of students turning to “safe spaces” is really about sheltering students from ideas with which they disagree. “That’s not what America is about,” he says. “Mr. Trump, he’s single-handedly bringing back freedom of speech. He’s enabled students to voice whatever we believe in a thoughtful way.” Students for Trump began as a Twitter account in October in a dorm room at Campbell University in Buies Creek, N.C. Ryan Fournier, a freshman and early supporter of Rand Paul, was drawn to Trump’s blunt rhetoric and policies on border control and employment. Between classes, homework and fraternity meetings, Fournier fired off tweets praising Trump and setting the record

CAMPUS CIRCLE April 2016

straight on what he considered misinformation. “We love Muslims. We hate Islamic Extremism!” one tweet said. In less than a month, Fournier had more than 14,000 Twitter followers. As GOP candidates like Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson dropped out of the presidential race, he gained thousands more. By December, he was devoting more than eight hours a day to spreading the word. More than 5,000 students in 200 chapters in 38 states are publicly on board. Fifteen chapters have taken hold in California, on campuses including the University of California, Santa Barbara and USC. For a volunteer-run enterprise, the operation is slick, with an HR department, a merchandise line and a team that’s constantly updating the website. Applicants for state director positions submit resumes and have their social media scrutinized. Fournier’s take on the selection process would not have sounded out of place on “The Apprentice.” “We don’t want to hire garbage,” the political science and pre-law major says. “It’s a very big job running a state.” John Lambert, a sophomore studying wealth management at Campbell, is the business-savvy one in the leadership duo. For Lambert, whose bio boasts that he founded a social media marketing company at age 16, Trump’s appeal lies in his business background and untraditional approach to politics. “We’re tired of the typical … failing politician that’s all talk and no action,” he says. “Mr. Trump is not about that. He’s going to hire people that can actually do the job, and that’s why we’re going to have a successful country.” Like Trump himself, the young people who support him trigger strong reactions. In a January news release, Fournier wrote: “We cannot forget our haters, whose messages give us a good laugh. As Taylor Swift would say, “Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.’” Looking ahead, the team is honing its ground operations in states like Wisconsin, New Jersey and California. “We want to match what Bernie Sanders is doing on the Democratic side,” Lambert says. The team hired Lopez, who grew up in the Central Valley town of Taft, to establish more chapters and recruit classmates like McIlvoy, who’s volunteering as state treasurer on top of working 20 hours a week at the library to pay off his student loans. “I’m on team ABH — anyone but Hillary,” McIlvoy says. “I realized Trump can really do it, and the other candidates really can’t.” Their strategy, they say, is to get classmates talking. McIlvoy, who identifies himself as half black, dressed up as Carson for Halloween, and Lopez recently launched a satirical petition calling for “GPA redistribution” to make a point about progressive tax structures that he thinks “punish success.”

“Our pitch was: Some students at the top have too much, and some students at the bottom have too little. So we should redistribute some of the top earners, the 4.0s, to lower students so everyone can graduate equally,” Lopez says. “That provoked people, and we had a lot of good conversations.” His last name raises eyebrows among those who see Trump’s accusation that Mexico is sending rapists across the U.S. border — which he’d protect with a wall whose height seems to grow with every debate. Detractors point to that plan as evidence that Trump is hostile to Latinos, if not a flat-out racist. Lopez notes that his great-grandfather was Mexican but says he considers himself “an American, a Californian, a Christian.” “Not all Hispanics hate Trump,” he says. And the more he comes out as a supporter, the more other students do too, he says. “I have about 25 chapter requests in my in-box right now that I have not been able to get to. The support is out there, and we’re trying to get them mobilized and speaking up.” Which is not to say that Trump — who has insulted women, minorities and other conservatives, among others — is any less polarizing a candidate on campuses than he is within the Republican Party itself. “We’re just not attracted to that,” said Kerida Moates, president of the UC Berkeley College Republicans. Her group, she says, has made huge strides in persuading the liberal campus mainstream that “we’re just regular people who have different ideas about how to make our economy work.” Then Trump comes along,” she says, “and suddenly all Republicans are being framed as racist again; all Republicans must be sexist. And it’s actually taking us backward in breaking those stereotypes.” Students who support Trump likely will remain a lonely group on campus, says Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. Trump, he says, continues to attract working-class supporters who don’t have college degrees and are anxious about job security in a modern economy that requires technology and information-based skills. But Schnur does see why some college-educated millennials might be drawn to Trump. “What Trump and Sanders have both done very effectively is mount a strident criticism against the traditional political process,” he says. “If you’re a young person and you don’t feel like politics-as-usual has a place for you, there’s a natural temptation to align with a candidate that can dramatically upend that system.” ——— ©2016 Los Angeles Times Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Film | Music | Culture

“NOT SINCE SISSY SPACEK PORTRAYED LORETTA LYNN HAS AN ACTOR INHABITED A LEGEND LIKE TOM HIDDLESTON PLAYING HANK WILLIAMS. HE QUITE SIMPLY BECOMES WILLIAMS FOR A NEW GENERATION OF COUNTRY FANS.” -Stephen Hubbard, ABC-NASHVILLE (WKRN)

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SONY PICTURES CLASSICS AND RATPAC ENTERTAINMENT PRESENT IN ASSOCIATION WITH CW MEDIA FINANCE A BRON STUDIOS AND RATPAC ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCTION TOM HIDDLESTON ELIZABETH OLSEN “I SAW THE LIGHT” CHERRY JONES BRADLEY WHITFORD MADDIE HASSON WRENN SCHMIDT CASTING BY DENISE CHAMIAN, CSA COSTUME DESIGNER LAHLY POORE-ERICSON DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANTE SPINOTTI, ASC AIC EDITOR ALAN HEIM, ACE PRODUCTION DESIGNER MERIDETH BOSWELL EXECUTIVE MUSIC PRODUCER RODNEY CROWELL MUSIC SUPERVISOR CARTER LITTLE MUSIC BY AARON ZIGMAN CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS MARGOT HAND BRENDA GILBERT EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS PATTY LONG JASON CLOTH JOHN RAYMONDS JAMES PACKER PRODUCED BY BRETT RATNER, p.g.a. AARON L. GILBERT, p.g.a MARC ABRAHAM, p.g.a G. MARQ ROSWELL, p.g.a. BASED ON THE BOOK “HANK WILLIAMS: THE BIOGRAPHY” BY COLIN ESCOTT WITH GEORGE MERRITT AND WILLIAM MACEWEN WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY MARC ABRAHAM COPYRIGHT © 2015 RATPAC ISTL LLC AND I SAW THE LIGHT MOVIE, LLC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WWW.ISAWTHELIGHTFILM.COM WWW.SONYCLASSICS.COM .

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FILM

DON CHEADLE WAS THE MAN IN CHARGE ON MILES DAVIS BIOPIC BEFORE EVEN HE KNEW IT

BY MARK OLSEN

LOS ANGELES TIMES (TNS)

LOS ANGELES — Just as superheroes have their canon origin stories, so does the movie “Miles Ahead.” The tale of how Don Cheadle came to play Miles Davis has already passed into the stuff of legend. “You’re not gonna make me say it again, right?” Cheadle asked with a laugh during a recent interview at his home in Los Angeles. It was shortly before he had to leave to tape a pair of television appearances and then head to multiple post-screening Q&As for the kind of industry crowds that could help spread the word about the film. When you star, direct, co-write and produce a daring and adventuresome movie like “Miles Ahead,” the promotional duties fall hard on you. The film is also Cheadle’s feature directing debut. It all began 10 years ago. Just after Miles Davis was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, Davis’ nephew Vince Wilburn Jr. said Don Cheadle would play the iconoclastic musician in a movie. This was news to Don Cheadle. Nevertheless, he eventually found himself meeting with Wilburn and other representatives of the Miles Davis estate. Cheadle had already appeared in a number of straightforward biopics — as disc jockey Petey Greene in “Talk to Me,” entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. in “The Rat Pack” and humanitarian Paul Rusesabagina in “Hotel Rwanda,” the role that earned him an Oscar nomination — so he wasn’t interested in a conventional telling of Davis’ life. Instead of a straight-ahead narrative on how he worked with this person or that, overturned the conventions of jazz or his notoriously difficult personality in public and private, Cheadle pitched the family on an unusual idea that at its core would be a movie Davis himself might have wanted to star in. “Even at that point I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, I’ll write it and produce it and direct it,’” Cheadle, 51, said. “I was thinking this is a better way to approach that person’s life. And as I was saying that out loud it became apparent it was going to be up to me to do that.” The story hurtles from one time period to another with a relentless sense of forward momentum. Based in the period in the late 1970s when Davis did not release any new music, the jazz legend seems haunted by memories of his ex-wife, the dancer Frances Taylor (played by Emayatzy Corinealdi). A reporter named Dave Braden (Ewan McGregor) barges his way into Davis’ house, wanting to write the story of his lost years. An unreleased tape of a recording session goes missing and as Davis and Braden try to get it back, they repeatedly cross paths with a sleazy music biz hustler (Michael Stuhlbarg) and a promising young trumpeter (Lakeith Lee Stanfield). With its mix of real incidents, fictionalized circumstances and an unpredictable, shifting tone that at times feels like a romantic reverie and then like a gangster chase movie, “Miles Ahead” is rife with Davis’ own restless energy. “We wanted to lean into the idea that we were going to do something different, we were going to do an anti-biopic,” said Cheadle’s co-writer, Steven Baigelman, also credited on the James Brown picture “Get On Up.” “We felt like the kind of person and the kind of artist that Miles Davis was, it was not possible, nor did we even want to try, to tell a whole life’s story in an hour and a half or two

CAMPUS CIRCLE April 2016

hours. We felt it would have been an injustice to both the music and the man.” “To me it’s saying, this is the best part of the Miles Davis that I know,” said Cheadle, “this creative energy, the quest to never stop trying to figure out the next thing to say. For me as a firsttime director, it was all kind of meta to me. I’m a first-time director in a place that’s brand new and scary for me, and I am trying to figure out how to say the thing I want to say.” Cheadle intensely studied the trumpet for the part and indeed plays on-screen — though the sounds heard are largely either vintage recordings of Davis or contemporary trumpeter Keyon Harrold, who recorded to match Cheadle onscreen. (The film’s score is likewise a mix of Davis recordings and original music by Robert Glasper.) Cheadle’s determination to really learn to play the trumpet underscored his commitment to the role. “He just really inhabited that character,” Corinealdi said. “I did often feel he was still Miles even when he was giving me some direction. And I did often wonder how he was able to navigate that for himself. I honestly don’t know that I have the answer as to how he was able to balance it, but he did.” “Miles Ahead” first premiered at the New York Film Festival last fall, ahead of this year’s Oscar nominations and the subsequent controversy over their lack of diversity. Both Cheadle and his film, an Oscar-nominated black actor turned filmmaker promoting a movie about an iconic black musician, have since been swept up in the media uproar around the issues of Hollywood, inclusivity and representation. “Everyone’s conflating events that feel, and maybe in a good way, that feel like they begin to stack up on each other,” he said. “It feels like we’re having this watershed moment where the conversation and this idea is not something that in two months time recedes back and we don’t even talk about it again. “No, we’re in sort of a movement right now, things moving in a direction where an issue like this or a question like this is something to be wrestled with, as uncomfortable as it may be or as inconvenient as it may be for people who just want it to be about entertainment,” he continued. “And for that I’m like, OK fine, have it out there, let’s talk about it.” “House of Lies,” the Showtime series Cheadle stars in and executive produces, comes back on the air for its fifth season later this month, and he will also soon be seen reprising the character War Machine as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the upcoming “Captain America: Civil War.” He’s said he’s waiting for the dust to settle from “Miles Ahead” before he decides whether he might go right into another project as director. The entire time Cheadle has been talking, his phone has been plugged in to a sound system and playing only Davis’ music — “I still listen to Miles all the time,” he said. Suddenly a quiet, traditional jazz tune shuffled to the jittery, heavy sound of Davis’ music from the early ‘70s. “See, this is Miles,” Cheadle said, perking up with the shift in mood between songs. “This is Miles Davis music? Yeah.” ——— ©2016 Los Angeles Times Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Film | Music | Culture

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THE WILD FEATHERS & THE SHELTERS AIN’T NO STRANGERS TO THE ROAD BY COOPER COPELAND SOMETHING ABOUT THE BILLOWING DUST picked up by an old pickup; the endless diners and bars that appear like beacons along desolate stretches of earth; and of course that old crooning of an engine working endlessly to get from point A to point B that all add up to what we call a road trip. For some, the road is a scary place, wrought with the looming ominous of isolation. For bands like The Wild Feathers and The Shelters, however, that same somber loneliness is the gift that keeps on giving. It all started back at SXSW this year where The Wild Feathers, the latest rock quartet hailing from the musical mecca of Nashville, began their most-beloved aspect of musicianship: the tour. While it’s to promote only their second record Lonely is a Lifetime, these five fellas definitely are not strangers to everything the road has to offer. In fact, all of their music can be attributed to it. Vocalist and bassist Joel King recalls, “We toured so much for that first record that most of the body of this record was actually done on the road. A lot of the lyric content—I mean it’s called Lonely is a Lifetime, and I mean you kind of feel that way on the road. You’re always around somebody, but it’s still lonely and weird. The whole record has a road vibe, and it’s direct cause from us recording the first record, and touring a year before that to support it. Then we drove like two years once it came out, and then it was just time to make the next one… It all pretty much happened on the road, during sound checks, or just in quiet moments when you had time to knock a few out. So I think it’s natural that we’re road folks, ‘cause it’s all we’ve been doing.” And he’s not joking; The Wild Feathers have toured over 250 cities in their relatively short career, but it’s that feeling

CAMPUS CIRCLE April 2016

when they climb on stage in front an entirely new set of ears and eyes that the sense of wholeness washes over them. These are the places they need to be, showing the world a sound that is wholly their own. What is their sound exactly? It’s a drawling, swaying, pummeling rock that is drenched with the dirt of old Americana that has been endlessly soaked up by driving through this wild country. And while they are stationed in Nashville, these boys don’t suit themselves as wannabe country singers or anything of the mocking sort. Instead, it’s the wide variety of musical spirit that embraces the city that so inspires them. “I think if we were trying to sound like a certain thing, it’d be hard to sell for us, that classic country sound. If I got up there and tried to do that, I’d look like a f***ing idiot,” says King. “You just want to be yourself. But what’s great about the Nashville thing, everybody’s kind of in it, and they really know what music is capable of there. You see it work. Like in Tulsa, the only people making money playing music has a regular job at a casino for ten hours a night. In Nashville, when I went out I saw people living regular lives, actually getting work, getting auditions, becoming writers. You could see the business work, for every kind of music.” On the same note, The Wild Feathers’ companions on the second half of their tour, The Shelters, find that while their home-base of Los Angeles can indeed be overwhelmed by that constant sense of creative push, their music has been about standing up against the current, no matter how strong it is. “I guess I hope we would be able to figure out how to fit in to that world, but I think us going into that scene, all of us are just trying to keep true to ourselves,” remarks Josh Jove, vocalist

and composer for The Shelters. “It’s about us having our own sound, and yes, being influenced by other bands and seeing what we’re a part of, but not letting the direction of those bands dictate which direction we want to go. If we feel that we want to go a direction that others aren’t then we aren’t afraid to do it, and we’ll try it, and maybe it will work. I think that people can appreciate a sound that isn’t dictated by its surroundings.” With their debut album set to be released later this year, this four-man rock band, who pull from a vast collection of influences, such as 60s psych-rock and contemporary surf-rock, The Shelters have a seemingly endless well of sound to tap into and rework to their own unique vision. And with legend Tom Petty producing the album, you better believe the boys were in good hands. “Working with Tom [Petty] is a blessing, obviously, and a dream come true that anyone would wish to have happen. We learned so much from him, in terms of how to put together a song and how we could—you know we’d have a song that was 90% there and then he’d give that little extra 10% of opinion that would make it into a good song. Just to think that structurally or just giving us tips about lyrics, like ‘Oh, that should be more relatable.’ Those are all the things that he’s very great at. It was such an amazing tool to have with us the whole time, to guide us in the right direction,” remembers Jove. And so, as both of these traveling bands now find themselves in our lovely city of Los Angeles, set to play at The Troubadour on Wednesday, April 6th, know that they come with eyes full of blurred billboards, lush forests, and the melancholic wonderment of what it means to be boys on the road.

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BOOKS

REVEL IN SPRING WITH A FRESH CROP OF BOOKS!

BY CAMPUS CIRCLE STAFF FICTION Fantasy, sci-fi and the literary commingle in Ken Liu’s finely crafted gems of stories. His retrospective collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, is bursting with metaphorical imagery that sneaks up on you and delivers a knockout punch. With Olive Kitteridege under her belt, Elizabeth Strout could coast along on her Pulitzer Prize. Instead, she continues to write strong, vulnerable characters with aplomb. My Name is Lucy Barton strikes all the right notes. Bursting with feeling, like a seventies pop song, Estelle Laure’s The Raging Light should be read at a feverish clip and then passed on to your favorite friend. Following in the footsteps of the magnificent True Grit and the great Winter’s Bone, Travis Mulhauser triumphs with Sweet Girl. Percy James is a protagonist with blood, guts and steel. Family, secrets and small town America collide in Anna Quindlen’s jewel of a novel. Miller’s Valley reads like a secret journal, bursting with intimacy. ”Intoxicating,” according to Amy Poehler, The Nest packs an emotional wallop. Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s family saga proves that dysfunctional families are dysfunctional in their own, thrillingly spectacular way. THRILLERS Bestselling literary horror writer Peter Straub’s career-spanning best short fiction is collected in Interior Darkness, which includes three previously uncollected stories. Straub proves himself a master of the genre as he plumbs the depths of his characters’ trauma. One of the premier dark fiction writers working today, Brian Evenson releases a new collection of his hallucinatory stories, A

CAMPUS CIRCLE April 2016

Collapse of Horses. The brilliant title story reads like an Oliver Sacks case study rendered by Edgar Allan Poe. His standout novel Last Days, a labyrinthine mystery inside a cult of amputees, also gets a new reissue. The thrill of meeting a stranger for a one night stand, without the dangers that could incur, make The Kind Worth Killing a vicarious read. Peter Swanson captures the craving for adventure that exists in all of us. Tim Powers, master of the hidden history, weaves together a suspenseful tale of old Hollywood with an occult riff on time travel in Medusa’s Web. When a brother and sister return to their family’s decaying Hollywood mansion after the suicide of their aunt, they discover a powerful but destructive family secret that soon draws them in. Jonathan Kellerman writes ‘em almost as fast as you can read ‘em, and somehow manages to keep each tale compelling and addictive. The Breakdown pairs Dr. Alex Delaware with his compadre, LAPD lieutenant Milo Sturgis for a quest into the darkside of the City of Angels. Simply done yet addictive, Diane Les Becquets’ Breaking Wild thrills at each step. Two women, one lost in the woods, the other, searching desperately to find her, undergo transformations, both external and internal. Lovers of Gone Girl and Girl on the Train will revel in Fiona Barton’s The Widow. How far would you go to protect the memory of a loved one? MEMOIR For a certain type of person, leaving home is all you think about for the bulk of high school. Two insightful new memoirs explore the occasion of being forced to return to your roots, with all the attendent repercussions, good and bad. George Hodgman and Dan Marshall both face ailing parents, one is Paris, Missouri, touchingly recounted in Bettyville and the other in Salt Lake

City, written with gallows humor in Home is Burning. Sarah Marquis’s Wild by Nature follows the author’s journey from Siberia to Australia. If you thought Cheryl Strayed’s Wild was fun, this account of a National Geographic explorer’s expedition will blow you away. Just when you think a memoirist must have written all of their best stories, out comes another. Augusten Burroughs’ Lust & Wonder proves that the author could write about paint drying and make it a page-turner. Compelling and tender, Matt Haig’s Reasons to Stay Alive chronicles a paralyzing depression. While this might not sound like a fun read, Haig’s journey is so full of insight, that it will make you pause and appreciate your own life a little more. YA The tension of The Hunger Games, combined with Lord of the Flies intelligence, makes Sandra Newman’s The Country of Ice Cream Star a formidable read. Follow Ice Cream Star as she fights her way across the detritus of a future United States. Una LaMarche revels unabashedly in emotion. Like No Other and Don’t Fail Me Now make a claim for compassion and connectedness in this unprecedented time of devices as security blankets. Anchored in the realities of her grandmother’s journals, Laura Amy Schlitz’s The Hired Girl aches with verisimilitude. The journey of Joan Skraggs, from “the muck of a chicken coop to the comforts of a society household” will hold you captivated. MAGICAL REALISM The author of Life of Pi, Yann Martel brings his own magic touch to The High Mountains of Portugal. Bursting with wonder, suspense and travel, this novel will turn you into a believer.

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FASHION

3 KEY PIECES TO MAKE YOUR SPRING WARDROBE SING BY MELISSA MAGSAYSAY CHICAGO TRIBUNE (TNS)

NECK SCARVES Recently spotted: Hedi Slimane started showing scarves on the spring 2015 Saint Laurent runway. Models wore thin scarves tied around their necks in an effortless, rock ‘n’ roll manner. Now, they’re being worn as thicker bandannas and thin, silky versions tied in bows, often paired with chokers and reinforcing the neck and shoulder areas as the focal point of the body that’s in fashion at the moment. Lanvin, Gucci and Rodarte included a lot of neck scarves in their spring 2016 runway collections. Staying power: “This is a very easy way to add texture and personalized effect to an outfit,” says Penny Lovell, Los Angelesbased fashion stylist to Anne Hathaway and Taylor Schilling. The neck scarf still has the ’70s vibe that dominates in fashion now but can be subtle, depending on the style chosen. How to best wear them: “It’s more of an attitude than a trend,” says Chutney Hunter, head buyer of designer ready-towear, shoes and handbags at Pacific Palisades boutique Elyse Walker. “There are no rules: Layer or tie them on with T-shirts, day dresses or with your favorite slip gown.”

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WHITE SNEAKERS Recently spotted: Designer Phoebe Philo and her fashion pack have a penchant for wearing crisp white Adidas Stan Smith sneakers. Along with Adidas, brands including Asics, Puma, Saint Laurent, Jil Sander, Vans and Nike have increased their white sneaker offerings. Staying power: The fresh look of the Stan Smith has evolved into the footwear item for appearing like an in-theknow style-setter while remaining comfortable. It won’t be surprising if this sneaker trend stays around longer than, say, the 5-inch platform stilettos, popular several years ago. “We are now at a point where literally any outfit can be modernized by a simple white sneaker,” said Red Godfrey, vice president of the fashion office for Seattle-based retailer Nordstrom. “It is a classic, and after its fashion fandom moves on, you’ve still got a great pair of sneakers for weekend walks and workouts.” How to best wear them: “Mixing sportswear with more classic pieces is very now,” Lovell says. That means sneakers are being paired with athleisure looks, as well as jeans, skirts and

long dresses. BOMBER JACKETS Recently spotted: On the runways at Gucci and Phillip Lim, and on off-duty models swapping out their bulky black leather moto jackets for borrowed-from-the-boys outerwear. Now, silky, more feminine versions like those from Gucci are being worn as the updated take on toughness. Staying power: “The bomber jacket is the sneaker of the apparel world,” Godfrey says. “Throw it on over anything, and look instantly and effortlessly cool. It’s comfy, youthful, practical, easy to dress down or dress up or borrow from the boyfriend.” How to best wear them: Use a bomber to add a pop of color, a bold print or a military look with a slight twist, Hunter says. ——— ©2016 Chicago Tribune Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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FUN

The Ferris wheel at Navy Pier in Chicago has its final gondola installed on Wednesday, March 2, 2016. (NANCY STONE/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TNS)

A rendering of Skyslide, a glass chute scheduled to debut at LA’s U.S. Bank Tower in June. (Photo courtesy OUE SKYSPACE/TNS)

BY JOSH NOEL

CHICAGO TRIBUNE (TNS)

WHEN IT COMES TO NEW THRILLS DEBUTING IN 2016, chatter generally winds back to the early April opening of a minitheme park involving a certain boy wizard at Universal Studios Hollywood. But why simply follow the crowd, especially at $115 a ticket? Excitement is about to launch coast to coast (and across the Atlantic Ocean) in the coming months. Here are five new attractions that will raise your goose bumps — boy wizards need not apply: ——— LOS ANGELES June will see the LA debut of Skyslide, a chute that travels 45 feet between the 70th and 69th floors of the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles. What’s the big deal? The slide is made of 11/4-inch clear glass. And it’s affixed to the outside of the building — which happens to be the tallest on the West Coast. Promoted stories from CELEBChatter.com For those able to keep their eyes open, Skyslide will present quite a view of downtown LA from 1,000 feet up, plus the hills and sprawl beyond. The brief-but-chest-clenching ride is part of a $50 million renovation of the building’s Skyspace observation deck, which offers 360-degree views from what is billed as California’s tallest open-air observation deck. Skyspace and Skyslide open June 25. Tickets for both (adult admission is $33 for the combination or just $25 for Skyspace) went on sale mid-March. www.skyspace-la.com ——— CHICAGO Through the 1970s and ’80s, downtown’s Navy Pier was an attraction waiting to happen, but ultimately something for locals and visitors alike to avoid. That changed somewhat with a 1995 renovation that elicited snickers from locals for its cultural vapidity but drew in the tourist masses, thanks in part to a Ferris wheel that attracted nearly 16 million people.

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In a bid to make Navy Pier a bit more relevant for all, the 3,300-foot-long platform reaching into Lake Michigan is getting another update, which will include a new and (of course) bigger Ferris wheel. Opening May 27, the new ride stands 196 feet high with 42 gondolas (up from 147 feet and 40 gondolas). The new gondolas will feature interactive touch screens because why would you simply want to revel in a slowly shifting perspective of one of the world’s great skylines? Maybe you can even check Facebook from the Ferris wheel! Chicago’s former Ferris wheel has moved south to Branson, Mo., where it’s expected to start spinning in June. www.navypier.com ——— LAS VEGAS It doesn’t get much more Vegas than driving a luxury sports car you can’t afford at speeds you can’t legally drive. But that’s why there’s Vegas. Opening April 15, SpeedVegas offers a roster of childhood dreams — Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches — and the opportunity to drive them up to 135 miles an hour on a 1.5-mile racetrack featuring 12 turns and 15-degree banks. Cars are available on a per-lap basis ($89 for the top of the line) or can be rented as part of a package that includes professional coaching. Since the opportunity to drive the cars is open to first-time racers, coaching might be a wise idea. Good news: Insurance is included. www.speedvegas.com ——— OKLAHOMA CITY Downtown Oklahoma City might not elicit visions of thrilling water sports, but the city’s $45 million Riversport Rapids aquatic facility opens May 7. Designed by the same team that developed an aquatics facility for the 2012 London Olympics, 11-acre Riversport Rapids offers Class II to IV rapids in a 1,000-foot channel for whitewater

rafting, kayaking and canoeing. For those skeptical that downtown Oklahoma City can summon furious enough waves, know this: Riversport Rapids will be an Olympic training facility. However, a mellower experience awaits in a second, 1,300-foot channel of slower water intended for families and beginners. www.boathousedistrict.org ——— BRIGHTON, ENGLAND Even if British Airways i360 didn’t do much of anything, what looks like a metallic doughnut wrapped around a 530-foot silver straw would still be a striking addition to the Brighton coast. But that metallic doughnut happens to rise 450 feet in the sky and will offer an unlikely ride above the English Channel when it’s expected to open this summer. Said doughnut is actually a “passenger viewing pod” that provides vistas stretching 26 miles on the clearest days: In one direction is Brighton, a city of 250,000 on England’s south coast, and to the other is the waterway between England and France. It’s a fairly simple ride: Board the pod (it can hold up to 200 people) before gliding slowly to the top. Passengers are free to move around as they wish. At night, the metallic doughnut becomes SkyBar — a high-rise watering hole. Should your mind go to a dark place with the thought of being trapped in a metallic doughnut 450 feet in the sky, the frequently asked questions have you covered: “And if something exciting pops into view and everyone shifts to one side there is no need to worry — it won’t be tipping over. The ride has been designed to cope with 200 guests regardless of where they choose to stand.” Bloody good! www.britishairwaysi360.com ——— ©2016 Chicago Tribune Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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A rendering of the upcoming British Airways i360 in Brighton, England. (JIM STEPHENSON/COURTESY BRITISH AIRWAYS I360/TNS)

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FOOD

HOLY GRILL FOOD TRUCK DOWNTOWN BRINGS THE SEARCH FOR GLATT KOSHER TASTES OF ISRAEL IN L.A. TO AN END

BY JENN HARRIS

LOS ANGELES TIMES (TNS)

LOS ANGELES — If you’ve walked through the streets of Jerusalem, as some of us have, holding warm laffa bread wrapped around shawarma — the entire sandwich laced with chile sauce — then one meal at the Holy Grill in Los Angeles can bring you straight back to Israel. The Holy Grill is a certified Glatt Kosher food truck located in a parking lot on 15th Street, in the middle of the downtown L.A. garment district. It’s relatively easy to find a Kosher food truck in Los Angeles, but a Glatt Kosher truck, which involves stricter requirements for meat, not so much. The truck specializes in common dishes found in Israel, including shakshuka, a traditional Israeli breakfast dish made with spicy, garlicky tomato sauce and two eggs — cracked right into the sauce — cooked until just past over easy. During the lunch rush on a recent Friday, men in suits with their sleeves rolled up, ties thrown over a shoulder, used their hands and strips of pita bread to eat the shakshuka. “Some of the recipes are from my parents, amazing cooks who specialize in Israeli-Moroccan cuisine,” said coowner Adiel Nahmias, who moved from Israel to the U.S. in 2008. “Most of the recipes are mine. It is a place where I can experiment and let my creativity grow and it was a great opportunity to feel the energy from back home.”

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Nahmias, who bought the truck (the name Holy Grill was inherited) in 2013 with his partner, Dvir Botach, tries to keep the dishes as close to what you’ll find at a restaurant or stand in Israel as possible. Some of the spices are imported from Israel, along with the pita bread — which happens to have a nice chew and be thicker and fluffier than most. The truck’s laffa bread, not the thick bubbly kind you may find at the Israeli restaurant Hummus Bar and Grill in Tarzana, is more of a lavash and comes from a bakery in the San Fernando Valley called Super Pita. There’s shawarma, pieces of chicken heavily spiced with cumin and garlic, served with grilled onions; round beef and lamb kebab patties studded with cilantro (similar to a Lebanese kafta); and pargiot, a marinated chicken dish made with green onion, paprika, cilantro and a few of Nahmias’ other secret spices. The hummus, which comes with almost everything on the truck, is creamier and more subtle than some of the grainier versions served at Lebanese restaurants. And you can eat it straight, with a spoon. You can also order bourikas, pastries filled variously with apples, meat and potatoes, or Nahmias can make you a bourikas sandwich: The thin, flaky dough is cut in half lengthwise, then stuffed with slices of hard-boiled egg and tomato. Just add hot

sauce and some garlic mayo, a thin, house-made sauce that tastes a bit like a creamy Italian dressing. In a small seating area next to the truck, there are squeeze bottles of the dressing conveniently placed every two feet or so on top of a table, covered in a vinyl tablecloth decorated with pictures of produce and bottles of soda. Most of the people eating lunch are putting the dressing on anything and everything. Next to the bottles of garlic mayo are a stack of white kippahs (brimless caps used to cover a person’s head during prayer) and blessings and prayers written in Hebrew on laminated pieces of paper, available to those who wish to say a blessing before a meal. “But my goal is to achieve customers of all types of backgrounds,” Nahmias said. You may still be thinking about that trip to Israel while you check out the prayers and eat your shawarma sandwich, but the fight over a parking meter across the street will bring you right back to Los Angeles. ——— ©2016 Los Angeles Times Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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FOOD

COOKBOOK: A LONG JOURNEY INTO KOREANAMERICAN FOOD

BY BILL DALEY CHICAGO TRIBUNE (TNS)

“KOREATOWN: A COOKBOOK” (Clarkson Potter, $30) is a cookbook, yes, but chef Deuki Hong and journalist Matt Rodbard go further than recipes, distilling two years of research, interviews and dining across the United States into what they write is “a candid and uncompromised snapshot of what it’s like to eat and drink in Korean-American communities today.” “For me, coming as a Korean-American, there’s a sense of pride,” said Hong, who along with Rodbard met me at Dancen, a small Korean grill restaurant in Chicago’s Lincoln Square, to talk about the book over dinner. The 26-year-old chef of New York City’s super-hot Korean barbecue restaurant, Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong, said the pair had to define the word “Koreatown” before the work could be written. “We really said it’s not a place; it really is a mentality. It really is a way of thinking, that KoreanAmerican hustle and grit. We could be in the middle of Arkansas, and if there’s a Korean restaurant across the street from a Korean laundromat, that, to us, is Koreatown,” he said. “We knew about New York. We knew about Los Angeles. We had an idea about Chicago. But going to Atlanta? Going to Wisconsin? … We didn’t know we had invaded a lot of America in an awesome way. At the end of the day, they’re cooking the food. Koreans are very prideful that way.” Korean food is, to quote Rodbard, “having a moment” right now. He sees it as partially due to a growing interest in Asian cuisines — “Everyone is rising right now.” Another factor, he said, is that Korean-Americans are embracing their heritage in restaurant kitchens. Chefs who, Rodbard said, may have been cooking traditional French, Spanish or Italian fare are realizing their mother’s Korean bean-paste soup is so good that others might be interested in it too. The pair also note in the book that “chefs of all backgrounds” are turning to Korean ingredients and flavors for their cooking.

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“You can’t get sick of eating Korean food,” Rodbard insisted. “The food doesn’t weigh on you like other foods. It’s exciting on the palate, exciting on the tongue.” Hong and Rodbard write that there are about 2 million people of Korean heritage living in the United States and that “in each of these communities, big and small, society revolves around clusters of restaurants that serve the traditional foods of the motherland.” What they set out to do was to show how this “rich food culture” could be both traditional and “distinctly American.” And they wanted to expose home cooks to a wide array of Korean foods, not just the kimchee tacos, fried chicken and barbecue that are so popular now. Hong proudly notes the book’s largest chapter is devoted to soups and stews. Barbecue, he adds, is the smallest. Also, right up front, is a glossary of equipment and ingredients, including a useful pictorial guide to Korean produce. The book’s more than 100 recipes are aimed squarely at home cooks. Indeed, the pair developed the recipes by shopping at a local Asian market and toting grocery bags up three flights of stairs to cook on an electric stove in Hong’s bachelor pad. (There’s a wonderful essay on how to cook Korean at home without annoying your neighbors.) “We never did a cookbook, so we didn’t know the process. We literally did it how you would do it. You would go shopping in a local Asian market, go to your house and develop these recipes,” Hong recalled. “If we can execute these recipes in a New York City apartment kitchen, they can be done anywhere.” ——— ©2016 Chicago Tribune Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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TV Cuba Gooding, Jr. as O.J. Simpson, left, and Joseph Buttler as Polygraph Examiner in “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.” (Ray Mickshaw/FX/TNS)

THE FRESH LENS OF ‘THE PEOPLE V. O.J. SIMPSON’ EXPOSES THE SAME SOCIETAL ILLS

BY LIBBY HILL LOS ANGELES TIMES (TNS) “AMERICAN CRIME STORY: The People v. O.J. Simpson” should have been an unmitigated disaster. Let’s start with the fact that the 10-episode FX series practically ignores the horrific crime at the heart of the socalled trial of the century. It treats the double homicide of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman as a piece of pop culture, giving more airtime to Kim Kardashian and her siblings than to the families of the murder victims. And yet what at first seemed little more than a campy retelling of the trial that transfixed the nation in 1995 has become its own cultural artifact, one that has drawn in a new generation of TV viewers mesmerized by the cast of characters who made their cases for and against Simpson before Superior Court Judge Lance Ito. The series, which has its finale airing Tuesday night, crafts dramatic tension by inverting audience expectations. Using history as horror, “The People v. O.J. Simpson” drops references that spur dread in viewers familiar with the case — when we meet Mark Fuhrman, when Marcia Clark wants a haircut, when trying on gloves is contemplated. The tension comes not in wondering what will happen next, but in knowing for certain what the future holds. There has been a move in pop culture to fixate more and more on “real life,” even beyond those realities offered by Beverly Hills housewives. Audiences grow increasingly fascinated by television shows and podcasts fueled by tales of

CAMPUS CIRCLE April 2016

true crime, wanting to watch narratives spool out, like poorly written Agatha Christie knockoffs. But too often in the true crime genre there is a tendency to lose the forest for the trees. People want the thrill of knowing the events they’re seeing really happened, but they cannot hold in their heads the idea that their entertainment comes at the cost of someone else’s life. It’s a great irony, then, that “The People v. O.J.” exists as the photo negative of reality television. It takes the truth and dresses it as fiction and asks us to pretend that the world it portrays is not the world we still inhabit. And so, if there’s a fallen hero within the world created in “The People vs. O.J. Simpson,” it is not the former Heisman Trophy winner and Hertz pitchman, but Robert Kardashian. Portrayed by David Schwimmer, we meet the Kardashian patriarch as a man of faith — in his God, in his friend O.J. Kardashian wants to believe in the best of people. Slowly, throughout the investigation and trial, his faith is broken down, until, in a taut scene featuring Kardashian rummaging through Simpson’s infamous garment bag — long-rumored to contain the murder weapon — it seems likely that Kardashian is not looking to exonerate his friend, but to find evidence that will condemn him. By the end of the series it’s clear that Kardashian deeply regrets his involvement in the case, admitting to ex-wife Kris that once the trial is over, Simpson will be out of their lives

forever. “It’s hard enough,” he says, “with half the country hating you.” The irony, of course, is that just four years after his 2003 death by cancer, Kardashian’s surname would become the calling card for reality television’s most controversial dynasty. What “American Crime Story” understands, perhaps better than any show on television, is that the Simpson trial was the flap of butterfly wings that triggered the cultural and political tsunamis that still plague the country and made the Kardashians’ fame possible. An empire built on the back of sex tapes and cellphone games, wedding sponsorships and personal brand building owes a good part of its existence to the foundation set by a nonfiction narrative that frequently pushed scripted television off the air. Often exploitative and sleazy, like the worst of future reality shows, the Simpson trial became appointment TV for an audience that found itself transfixed by every stomachchurning twist. That it was ostensibly real life seemed to only deepen the passions inflamed by the events, leaving a media desperate to provide enough content to feed the beast. The explanation for the phenomenon was addressed in the “Conspiracy Theories” episode when Alan Dershowitz (Evan Handler) instructs his Harvard law class that, “You need to provide a narrative, not just in the courtroom; in the world” before saying, “Look at what the culture is becoming. The media, they want narrative too. But they want it to be

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TV Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark and Christian Clemenson as Bill Hodgman in “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson.” (RAY MICKSHAW/FX/TNS)

entertainment.” It’s a meta moment in a television series filled with them. Clark (Sarah Paulson) serves as the crusader at the heart of “American Crime Story.” But as the series unwinds we see the cost of her mission to see a guilty party punished appropriately. In the episode “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” Clark is not only bullied by the press into a disastrous makeover but tortured by both of her exes, lambasted in the press as a bad mother, exposed in the tabloids with nude photos and mocked in open court because of the demands of child care. At the end of the episode she weeps, defeated, to Christopher Darden (Sterling K. Brown), “I’m not a public personality. I don’t know how to do this.” Clark isn’t the only woman savaged by American culture within the confines of the trial and the series doesn’t shy away from any of it. Ito’s wife, Peggy York, is the subject of extensive gender and revulsive insults within the Fuhrman tapes after she served as the detective’s supervisor. Even Nicole Brown Simpson can’t remain untouched by the tinges of the idea that perhaps she did something to bring her fate upon herself with individuals finding it all too easy to look past the idea that the domestic violence she had suffered at the hands of O.J. in some fashion predicated her fate. The Violence Policy Center reports that in 2013, of all women killed by men, 94 percent knew the perpetrator, and 62 percent were wives or intimate acquaintances of their killers. But men weren’t immune from being thrust into narratives

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from the trial that they couldn’t control. It’s just that, to borrow from Dershowitz’s language to his students, they were better at being the ringleader of the media circus. Johnnie Cochran (Courtney B. Vance) as depicted by “American Crime Story” understands the way the world works better than just about anyone. A complex man, driven by equal parts Christian charity and vanity, Cochran intuits the prosecution’s actions before they do, understands the perceptions of the jury before they can and generally luxuriates in the fact that he’s unquestionably the smartest person in the room. But the series is careful to illustrate how Cochran’s brilliance isn’t enough to effortlessly free Simpson, as the lawyer’s true opponent isn’t Clark or the court or even public perception; it’s America’s institutionalized racism. For all his insight and acumen, Cochran still fell victim to perceptions centered on the color of his skin. In “The Race Card” episode we see a flashback in which Cochran is pulled over by an unwitting LAPD officer who handcuffs the assistant district attorney in front of his daughters. Race was always going to be central to the story “American Crime Story” was telling, but it’s difficult to say if the producers had any idea just how resonant the themes of the Simpson trial would remain in these modern times. In “Manna From Heaven,” the Dream Team receives word that Ito is disallowing the inclusion of Fuhrman’s inflammatory recordings, outside of proof that he perjured

himself while on the witness stand. It’s a decision that enrages Cochran, undermining his argument that the detective and LAPD potentially falsified evidence to strengthen their case. He rages and co-counsel Robert Shapiro (John Travolta) tries to soothe him, saying, “I’m sorry you’re disappointed. I understand everything you’re going through,” only for Cochran to assure him, “There’s no way you could understand what this is like, Bob.” Cochran understands the plight of being a person of color in America, particularly when it comes to matters of law enforcement. What “American Crime Story” wants us to realize is that, for Cochran, and for many Americans, the trial was the continuation of a conversation that began a handful of years before with the recorded police beating of Rodney King, the acquittal of the officers involved and the riots that followed. There was no lasting social change spurred by the trial of Simpson or the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, no silver lining to senseless brutality. “American Crime Story” set out to tell the story of the trial but, more important, to tell the story of America as it existed in that moment. It’s a recognizable place. Little has changed, even as everything has changed. ——— ©2016 Los Angeles Times Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. CAMPUS CIRCLE April 2016

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